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Tag Archives: Bloodborne

PS+ users are finally getting the hard hitting month of games they’ve been waiting for. Throughout March of 2018, people will have access to Bloodborne (PS4), Ratchet and Clank (PS4), Legend of Kay (PS3), Might No. 9 (PS3 with PS4 crossbuy), Claire: Extended Cut (Vita and PS4 crossbuy), and Bombing Busters (Vita and PS4 crossbuy).

People have pined for amazing AAA blockbusters to enter the program on PS4 for some time, and now their wait is finally over. There’s a caveat to this announcement, though, and it’s that the Vita and PS3 will no longer be part of the free games portion of PS+ as of March 8, 2019.

There’s a variety of takes on this across the internet, and many of them are predictably hyperbolic. Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX), a respected member of the online gaming community, stated: “Sony sacrificing the PS3 and PS Vita so we can get good games on PS Plus again.” I think that’s probably part of their plan, but no, this wasn’t a move ‘for the gamers’, as Sony so often leads us to believe.

I don’t think anybody expected that the PS3 and PS Vita would get ‘free’ games forever. At some point, it’s no longer financially viable for a company to pay developers and publishers large sums of money to feature games on platforms that people have long since moved on from. We’re well past the halfway point of the PS4’s life cycle (we won’t be waiting another 5 years before the PS5 is released), and with over 70 million consoles out there (as of December of 2017), people are spending less time on last generation machines than ever before. So, why continue to support those old fossils with ‘free games’? This was going to happen sometime, and ‘now’ seems about right.

But there is another issue, here. Each platform had two free games each month, and sure, if you no longer play on the Vita or PS3, you probably don’t care about losing games on those platforms. However, many of the titles on those platforms were crossbuy, so PS4 users probably got about 4 games they could add to their digital library each month. Sony have clarified that in the Vita’s and PS3’s absence, the PS4 will still only receive two games each month. So, people are going to have access to fewer games each month.

And they’re excited about that?

Well, it certainly helps that Sony has dangled a pretty attractive carrot at the time of this announcement. “Who cares about losing the number of games you get each month?” They ask. “When you can have games like Bloodborne and Ratchet and Clank, that’s all you need!”

No wonder people are excited.

To be fair, Bloodborne is, in my opinion, the best game the PS4 has to offer. The fact that everyone with a PS+ membership can enjoy it now is great, but I’m wary about taking this as a sign of things to come. Sony have pulled bait and switch routines before. In case anyone has forgotten, Driveclub was supposed to be free to all membership holders, but that’s not exactly how things went down.

But let’s say that the PS4 will see a regular trickle of solid AAA games from here on out. Are they really spending that much more to get the likes of Bloodborne on PS+? No, it’s not like they’re paying off an independent developer so their game will debut on the platform day and date for the low cost of nothing. Bloodborne has been out for ages now, and most of the people who were interested in spending money on it already have it. So, now they can hook a bunch more people that may potentially buy the game’s DLC (as will the developer). After all is said and done, I’d wager Sony are probably going to SAVE money… at least, until the PS5 comes out.

Business is business, and that’s fine, but I think it’s important for gamers to have a realistic view of what’s really happening when a company delivers bad news from one hand while holding something shiny in the other.